4K UHD Television

Why 4K UHD Television is annihilation but a CES wet dream

Without them, we'd accept no addition in gadgetry and tech toys. Without the companies that are bold their articles at CES, guys like me, James Kendrick and Matthew Miller would accept annihilation to oggle at. 

The technology that is authoritative the bigger burst at CES and authoritative guys like us distill like berserk dogs appropriate now are 4K UHD TV sets. 

What's a 4K UHD TV set, you ask? And why do you charge one? Absolute acceptable question, I'm so animated you asked.

4K is an acutely aerial video resolution that is currently actuality acclimated in affected cine releases. When you go and see a new theatrically appear film, and you appearance it in agenda projection, you ability be advantageous abundant to see it in 4K.

2012's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" was one of the aboriginal films to be produced and broadcast in this format. About 17,000 amphitheater screens on the absolute planet accept the able accessories to affectation 4K films in their built-in resolution.

Digital films are still for the best allotment produced in 2K, which is almost one division of 4K resolution, if you advertence the clear below.

A lot of the problems accept to do with the actuality that a lot of accepted affection films are in 3D, and the anatomy rates/bit ante appropriate in adjustment to do 3D films in 4K would outstrip the capabilities of the bump and agenda storage/playback technology in aloof about every 4K-equipped theatre.

So if this actuality is adamantine abundant to do in a cine theatre, why is the customer electronics industry hasty to put this in your active room?At CES, SONY alien a new band of Bravia XBR 900 LED 55" and 65" 4K UHD TV sets, with prices TBA. Last year's 84" archetypal is currently priced at $25,000. Yep, these things are appealing pricey.

But boy, technologically, are they shweet. Aloof to get a bigger compassionate of how air-conditioned these new UHD sets are, let's allocution a bit about the absolute HD accepted and how abundant college resolution 4K absolutely is.

Broadcast HD agenda television is transmitted at 1080i (interlaced) or 720p (progressive) resolution. That is, over the air, non-subscriber DTV is able of 1080 or 720 curve vertical resolution.

DirecTV and FiOS and added subscriber casework like iTunes and Netflix can address or advance (via Internet-connected On-Demand) at a abundant college affection 1080p (progressive) for called exceptional pay-per-view content.

1080p is 1920x1080 pixels per frame. To abundance a 1080p affection blur in aerial quality, it requires anywhere amid 25 and 50 Gigabytes per cine on a Blu-Ray disc, depending on the bit amount and the encoding adjustment used.

And alike so these films are still aeroembolism from their aboriginal affected 2K format, but application a "less-lossy" encoding adjustment so you still achive absolute aerial video quality.

Are you starting to accept the calibration of the botheration yet? No? Well accumulate following.

Naturally, casework like DirecTV, Netflix and iTunes cannot beck "less lossy", high-quality films like you can abundance on a Blu-Ray, because cipher in their home has the affectionate of Internet broadband that would be bare to accomplish that affectionate of abiding abstracts amount appropriate to do it consistently and reliably.

Instead, those companies accelerate awful aeroembolism abstracts streams and you end up seeing "artifacts" and pixelation in the films.

You charge to be able to accomplish 5 Megabit to 10 Megabit per additional abstracts ante in adjustment to sustain aerial affection "lossy" video with a 1080p film, admitting a 720p film's requirements are beneath than bisected of that.

Never apperception if your cable affiliation is 20 Megabits, your absolute throughput to Amazon's billow to beck Netflix or to Apple's iCloud will be beneath than that because of overhead, baffled cartage amid the links and altercation with added bodies accessing the service.

So what absolutely would you charge to abundance a 4K movie, so you can comedy it aback in native, uncompressed architecture on your UHD set, bold that the costs of these things will go bottomward abundantly in the abutting 5 or 10 years?

If we demand to use the agenda workprint of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as a benchmark, every distinct anatomy of the blur is 45 Megabytes in size, and has an almost resolution of 4352x2176.

The two hour and blaster minute blur has about 230,000 frames at 24 frames per second.  If we do the somewhat inexact aback of the envelope math, 45 megabytes per anatomy * 230000 frames equals 10,350,000 Megabytes, or 10,107 Gigabytes, or aloof beneath 10TB. 

That is what is bare to abundance a distinct 4K affection blur attempt at 24 frames per second, at abounding uncompressed workprint quality.

Oh you demand to watch The Hobbit at the director's aboriginal 48 frames per second? Double it.

The abandoned way to accomplish it applied to administer films in this architecture would be to use the industry's absolute methods of application lossy compression to accord with the problem, trading off computational complication for bargain abstracts rates, such as with SONY's new XAVC recording technology, or the High-Efficiency Video Coding (HVEC) compression adjustment that is currently in abstract by the MPEG group.

Even with these avant-garde compression techniques we're still talking about astringent accumulator requirements (128GB to 256GB per movie) and apparently article forth the band of 100 Megabits per additional abiding abstracts ante to beck it over the Internet so we can comedy it at 30 frames per second, so it doesn't attending like complete applesauce on that big-ticket 4K set.

Oh did I acknowledgment that 4K is activity to eventually be replaced by 8K? Which is four times the resolution of 4K? Yup, the maxi-zoom dweebies in the labs are already addition out how to get that into our theatres and active apartment next. That's bold CES alike lives to see 2025, anyway.

Most bodies accept abundant problems accepting annihilation faster than 25 Megabits into the home, let abandoned 100 Megabits or alike 1 Gigabit.

In my ordinance-crazy, permit-loony authoritative boondocks in South Florida, cipher wants to breach up the sidewalk to accompany fiberoptics to the home (FTTH) and that would at best accord me 100-150 Megabits of abiding abstracts ante for that 4K video stream, bold the agreeable was buried on the bend of my ISP's arrangement application a CDN like Limelight or Akamai.

So instead I accept to alive with VDSL, which is an 18 Megabit downlink technology. That's way, way abbreviate of what 4K On-Demand would need.

Unless you alive in South Korea area Gigabit to the home is adequately commonplace, we're talking Star Trek-level stuff, people.

So you're apparently wondering, if the built-in abstracts accumulator and broadband appropriate to cull it off isn't accessible for the home, what absolutely are you declared to do with that $25,000 TV set?

Well, for the time being, you comedy absolute Blu-Ray movies on a amateur that can upscale. In added words, a pixel quadrupler. To adduce my acquaintance at SONY, 

"At the moment, there’s no concrete 4K architecture for the movies. That’s why we’ve launched the 4K server, and appear the new administration account + media amateur to accompany 4K to consumers. It’s up to the industry to assimilate the architecture now."

What is this media player, you ask? Well, SONY hasn't appear a ton of capacity about it yet, but it's about a computer that is pre-loaded and accustomed to you on accommodation with 10 affection films on it.

Presumably, if you demand new movies loaded on it, somebody has to appear appointment your abode and accomplish account on it, or a distinct blur download ability booty days. SONY hasn't absolutely abundant how the administration account for your on-premises accessories will work.

Will the US broadband basement anytime be accessible for 4K on-demand video? Allocution Aback and Let Me Know.